There is a school of thought out there that Manteca should not close its current police station when the new one breaking ground next month in the 600 block of South Main Street is completed.

Rogger Guiterrez — a candidate for the District 4 City Council seat — has embraced such a proposal as a way of protecting essential public safety.

There is no reason to suggest his stance is anything but sincere and not simply pulling rabbits out of the hat for the sole purpose of getting district voters to mark the box next to his name on the Nov. 3 ballot.

But it is at its roots it is a silly proposition that would not do much of anything to protect essential public safety levels although it would significantly increase the cost of maintaining them.

That’s assuming, of course, the goal is not to stop construction of the new $92 million complex and to move forward with two police stations.

If the end game is to stop the construction of the new police station, doing so would put the safety of those delivering essential public safety services at risk. It would also force the city into ripping a page from the Winchester House playbook via nonsensical investments in expanding the cramped maze of the current police department where closets decades ago were converted into offices.

At the heart of the argument is the Fresno line — one of two heavily used railroad lines that bisect Manteca.

The Fresno line for-all-practical-purposes slices the city in two. There are eight at-grade crossings for the line that currently sees upwards of 40 trains passing through Manteca daily

The new Austin Road overpass also bridges the Fresno line, giving Manteca its first non at-grade rail crossing.

Manteca’s other rail line — the Altamont — mostly runs along the shared border with Lathrop. Four of its five crossings are at grade. The one that isn’t is Lathrop Road.

The concern, of course, is not just passing trains delaying emergency responses but the occasional train-vehicle/pedestrian collision or train engine mechanical failure that blocks multiple crossings.

It is a reality Manteca law enforcement going back to the constable days of 1918 have dealt with.

In modern times going back to 1970 when the city had 13,845 residents and the department had sufficient manpower to do so, police chiefs handled the situation by creating beats.

That meant unless multiple officers were needed to handle one call or multiple incidents were happening concurrently, there was an officer available to respond to a call.

Today, there are multiple beats on both sides of the tracks.

As an added bonus, police units today are mobile offices.

That means the lion’s share of required report writing is performed by officers using in-vehicle computers when they are not responding to a call or patrolling.

It allows front-line officers to spend more time on the streets.

As such, the tracks — and by an even larger degree — the location of the police station has a minimal impact on police response time.

That said, there are times if a major incident such as the In and Out shooting a while back and similar events requires backup, officers from other beats as well as members of the command structure at the station and any detectives that are also need to respond.

If the incident is north of the tracks, police scrambling toward crossings that are open in the event of stopped trains head to the freeway, via Union Road if need be.

Placing the station south of the tracks flips the equation.

That said, the South Main location is only an intersection away from the freeways as opposed to the current Center Street location that is eight intersections away.

Instead of operating two stations even if the older one needs minimal staffing and support as well as lower accompanying operating costs such as electricity, it could easily mean the city would need to spend at least the equivalent of placing two additional officers on the streets or reduce its frontline patrol force by an equal amount.

If the argument is the city doesn’t need an adequately sized headquarters to support the street duties and wellness of officers plus add modern tech tools such as a real time crime center so they can function in the most effective manner possible, one really needs to take a close look at the current police station built in the 1970s.

It reflects mythical Mayberry RFD realities in terms of keeping officers and support personnel safe.

All one needs to do is tour the facility complete with exposed breezeways that would be unacceptable to secure an Army facility let alone a police station to see that the city is not pursuing an unneeded “Taj Mahl-style” police facility.

You can argue that Manteca needs to add more officers but the city also needs to support them so they can do their jobs as well as address real officer safety concerns.